One of the best novels I’ve ever read, oh yeah. Endless imaginative though a mirror to the author’s exact reality. Zany. Wild. Brutal. Harrowing. A loOne of the best novels I’ve ever read, oh yeah. Endless imaginative though a mirror to the author’s exact reality. Zany. Wild. Brutal. Harrowing. A love song sang with conviction....more
Ah, just about the best book I’ve ever read. Lucky me, the stars are shining on me, lucky me the moon is shining on me, lucky me here comes the sunrisAh, just about the best book I’ve ever read. Lucky me, the stars are shining on me, lucky me the moon is shining on me, lucky me here comes the sunrise shining on me. ...more
TLDR: Forrest Gump and Bubba go to old timey Spain.
For me, this was one of those big life changing books. I read most of part one at my day job last sTLDR: Forrest Gump and Bubba go to old timey Spain.
For me, this was one of those big life changing books. I read most of part one at my day job last summer, but I do remember taking Part One to the beach with me. I had taken a razor blade and cut the book in half, taping the paperback with packaging tape so it could not fall apart on me. I do this sometimes with a book over five hundred pages, makes it easier to carry around, and there are always other $2 copies of "The Classics" around at a yard sale or on the internet, of course. I also downloaded the book on my phone (phone was the Edith Grossman translation, which I found to be better than the John Rutherford translation, which was the paperback I chopped in half). The Grossman translation was recommended to me by my friend Joey who had to read the novel for school, but there were free versions on the iBook and Kindle store, because as with all classics, it is old as hell and in the public domaine, I paid the money for the eBook this time based on the rec.
As I was reading part one, I was also following along to a Yale open studies course, lectures in the form of a podcast series, free online, given by Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria. I would read a chapter or two and then listen to the lecture, driving home from the oil refinery on the New Jersey turnpike, as if I was attending Yale. The lectures were great. Very informative and since the subject matter was so easy to read but had such depth (mirrors within mirrors, a meta-novel if there ever was one). From these lectures, I learned all about who Cervantes was, and that's great, soldier, man who lost his hand, slave, guy who was Shakespeare's brother from another mother, all that. The novel was explained like this ... Part one was written quickly while in prison in 1604. It was an instant hit. A few years later, someone ripped off Don Quixote and made their own fan fiction sequel. In 1615 Part Two of the novel was published, mentioning the fraudulent Part Two often, rallying against its fraudulent author and Don Quixote and Sancho Panza even having to contest with these fake versions of themselves within the second Part.
Three novels, one written by Cervantes in prison, one a phoney by some other person, and the second and final novel, a commentary and conclusion to it all.
So, okay, Part One was really good. It has all the famous stuff in it, and pretty much right away - such as Alonso Quixano going "crazy" from reading too many books on chivalry, and reimagining himself into an errant knight instead of hanging around and being a hidalgo. He is teamed up with Sancho Panza by page 61 and fighting the windmills by page 62. Part One is a book of constant adventure, and tribulation, most often physical. Part one is easy reading. Except here and there, we fall into other short stories that are not about Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, and while those short stories (which are always running parallel to the main themes of what our "heroes" are up against) are not as exciting as the main story line of the novel, they are good. Out of the first 500 pages there are maybe 150 that are digressions about other characters who don't play a big role in the plot, but play an important role in the universe of the story, and explain what peasant life was in comparison to noble life. Part Two doesn't have a single digression, and it's amazing. Put it to you this way, if you get one hundred and fifty pages into part one, just stick with it, it's so worth the reading.
I didn't read the fraudulent second part to Don Quixote. But on a cross country trip, 2500 miles in ten days, Arizona, Nevada, California, I read Cervantes' Part Two and it was absolutely wonderful. Some of the best reading I've ever had the fortune of falling upon. Everybody was right. They said this was great and they were all right. Spellbound, that's what I was lying in my tent reading this in Death Valley. I was that way on the airplane too coming home. Right now, I am completing my reading of Don Quixote with a reading of Hamlet, which I kept coming across as being a sister text to this book, the mirror within the mirror of it all, play within a play, and I am reading Nabokov's book of lectures on Don Quixote. One of the points he makes, is that the book is not really a comedy, but a gauntlet of the cruelty man is capable of, mostly what he is speaking to is a series of events that happens at the hands of a husband and wife team who use Don Quixote and Sancho as literal puppets themselves.
At times I couldn't help but think of Shrek and the Donkey, at other times I couldn't help think what if The Bible was a buddy cop movie, and just a few hours ago, someone sent me a message that they are reading the book and it reminds them of Monte Python. Yes of course, all those things and more. Melville got some ideas here. Ahab was born here, supposedly. It doesn't matter, it's such a big book with so much richness to it, and a feeling like "I just dropped acid for my acid" that any literary theory will work thrown against the wall of Don Quixote. Hey, I might even teach a class on it, any kid on the street could because whatever they say it is, kinda is.
Read this one one day. Think of it as two five hundred page novels, both dense but easily digestible. Both fun, and sad, and epic in scope but conversational in tone, and medicine for the pain you have or forgot you had but is still there.
Now back I go to the Yale lecture series, to see what Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria says about Part Two. I'm guessing he really liked it. ...more
A really great novel. It’s about a teenage girl who loses her mind and goes looking for it in an institution. Reading this reminded me how great art cA really great novel. It’s about a teenage girl who loses her mind and goes looking for it in an institution. Reading this reminded me how great art can be when it’s wounded and weird and funny and strange where the heart is. Takes place in the 90s, back blurb compares it to the Bell Jar and Girl, Interrupted. I thought it was its own beast. I thought it was wild and fun, and devastating, and cool....more
This was one of the most wonderful books I’ve read in my life. Poignant, funny, meditative. Concerned with nature, art, love, regret, and beauty. 135 This was one of the most wonderful books I’ve read in my life. Poignant, funny, meditative. Concerned with nature, art, love, regret, and beauty. 135 pages ... reads like a British cousin to So Long See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell (which I also highly recommend)...more
Joey moved in during the last heatwave. He slept on an air mattress in our spare room for five weeks. No air conditioning. There wasn’t any other furnJoey moved in during the last heatwave. He slept on an air mattress in our spare room for five weeks. No air conditioning. There wasn’t any other furniture in that room. Just the air mattress. Maybe a lamp. A blue room. The loudest room in America. He was 23, had a mustache, and Jim Morrison hair. One or two days a week he wore a vertically striped pastel shirt called his ‘fun shirt’. “What’s up Bud,” he’d say walking down the hallway in his white boxer shorts and the fun shirt. “What’s up, Joey,” I’d say putting coffee on. He worked on his poetry at my kitchen table when I wasn’t home, maybe. He had written a hundred poems on scraps of paper and bookmarks at his job at McNally Jackson, a job he was quitting because working in a bookstore sucks. He was a clerk there, stocked shelves, sometimes he ran events in the basement. He told me that all the girls who came in looking like supermodels usually bought Argonauts by Maggie Nelson. We weren’t charging Joey rent because his room was like a small prison cell. NYC had made him miserable. All his poems were all about being super sad because of an unrequited love. Or about his family. Or about his friends. Or about his job at the bookstore. Or about make believe stuff that was really fun. His stuff had a little bit of 'fuck you' in it without being mean. The common denominator in all his work, was that it was transcendent. I don't know. I read a lot of books. I would never be friends with someone who's work I didn't think was really good. Never in a million years would I let somebody come and live in my house if they were an artist I didn't think was brilliant. Joey let me read his poems, I let him read the book I was working on. He'd sit on one couch in one room and I'd sit on one couch in the other room. I'd hear him laugh like crazy. "What's funny?" And then he'd hear me laugh and he'd yell, "What's funny?" That's a good question. What's funny? If you ask Joey, New York City isn't funny. The Big Apple was the biggest love that didn’t love you back that I knew. Jersey City would save his soul, I figured. I was right.
I went to work every work day, and Rae went to work every work day, and Joey went to work every work day. At night we all got drunk and listened to records. He'd tell me and Rae about girls he had crushes on. And we'd tell Joey that crushing was an admirable thing to be doing. Crushing, crushing, all the live long day. He'd tell us about some crush that'd come into the bookstore looking so beautiful it was hard to take, and he'd watch the crush drift over to the N section and she'd reach down and pull up Argonauts and then crush her way to the register and then crush her way out of the store.
One day the heat finally broke, and summer seemed over. We went out for breakfast at a place that had wrought iron tables welded to the restaurant wall. We sat in wrought iron chairs welded to the the restaurant or anchored into the ground. While we were sitting there eating eggs and bacon, he got a message that Civil Coping mechanisms wanted to put out his first book of poems. This book of poems. They had an early version of it.
That was exciting. I'm not sure if it had a title at that point. I know at one point it was called 'Forthcoming from Hobart', because Joey was trying to get Hobart/SFLD to put it out and that title was really funny. Like, really presumptuous. There's nothing better than being presumptuous and not taking yourself totally seriously. I don't know, maybe 'Forthcoming from Hobart' was just something that we said when we were wasted. An inside joke. I don't know if he submitted it that way. Maybe the early version of Tom Sawyer CCM wanted to publish was called 'Forthcoming from CCM' in their inbox.
I like that though, I like the idea of submitting something to Wave Books, "Hey check out my manuscript 'Forthcoming from Wave Books', lemme know what you think." But here was this message from Civil Coping Mechanisms and that was cause for celebration ... Seidlinger wanted to talk to Joey about the book, the possibilities of it. Later that night he called Joey on the phone and they talked about it for nearly three hours, Joey sitting on the air mattress in the blue prison cell that me and Rae had for him, free of charge.
But that morning, we were not too far from the Holland Tunnel. I said, “Now that you’re a Jersey City poet, everybody is suddenly interested!” He winked at me. He did some great big heaving Steve Urkle laugh, and maybe would have pulled the table over but it was welded down. Rae almost spit her coffee out. Everybody was suddenly happy and we ordered breakfast beers to celebrate Joey’s success.
It feels good to make art and it feels good when people care about your art. I care about Joey's art for my own selfish reasons, his art inspires me. Reading his work makes me want to make my own work. I recognize that in all my favorite writers and musicians and painters. I can't do what they do, but I can do what I do, and I can do what I do because I've just experienced what they do and it has lit me on fire to make my own art.
The next day while walking home from work Joey was almost squashed flat by a maroon Toyota Tercel. He’d gotten off the PATH train and was walking back to our apartment with a bag of pastries in his hand. At the intersection of JFK Blvd and Montgomery Ave. a near-death experience tapped him on the shoulder. He had the walk signal and began to trot across the intersection, when in swooped the maroon Toyota, passing within inches of crushing Joey into a red paste. The driver pulled over just a few feet away and hung his head out the window, and said, “I almost kilt you, bro.” “Yeah, I know.” “Killllt you, bro. Hahaha.” “Thanks, yeah. That’s what happened.” “Hahaha. Fucking killllt you, bro. You fucking lucky. Dead little bro, hahaha.” The maroon Toyota moved along, Joey adventured the rest of the way to our apartment. A survivor. He was just one of the ordinary heroes of the block we all lived on. I was writing at my desk when he walked in the apartment, looking distraught. He then told me the story that I just told you and I said, “It’s too dangerous to walk around around here. Cars flying everywhere. Forget about riding a bike. What’s with the bag?” “They let us take home the leftover pastries they don’t sell for the day.” The bookstore also had a pastry case because people liked books, sure, but they didn't buy them. They came in and looked at the books and then while in the store they ordered them from Amazon. I said, "Your bookstore doesn't donate the leftovers to the homeless people?” “They do, but—” “The people who work in the store get dibs over the homeless.” “Yeah.” “Well what do you have?” He opened the bag. There were two butter cookies, a croissant, and half a brownie. I reached in and took one of the butter cookies, to be polite, leaving the brownie and the croissant in there. Any sensible person, looking out for themselves, would have taken the brownie or the croissant. I bit into the butter cookie. “I can’t believe you didn’t take the brownie, man.” I laughed. I had a mouth full of cookie. “I was being polite.” He shook his head and I almost choked on that cookie, god damn. Hahaha. I'm lucky to be alive....more
"On a piece of poster board I've inked in a huge crude calendar. Now, first thing out of bed I'm marking an X through today."
This was like Renata Adle"On a piece of poster board I've inked in a huge crude calendar. Now, first thing out of bed I'm marking an X through today."
This was like Renata Adler's Speedboat if it had guts and more blood than is supposed to fit in a body. Not stuck up. Not even 1% stuck up. Some reviews complained they couldn't figure out what was going on in this book. Yeah. That's life. Mary Robison knows what life is. Mary Robison is great.
Gloriously absurd, I said into the Goodreads machine ...more
So twee and about nature but the two characters a six yr old and her grandma, they're such mean people anEasily one of the best books I've ever read.
So twee and about nature but the two characters a six yr old and her grandma, they're such mean people and they get in fights the whole time. There is a 'father' there too but he is not part of the real story. He's just there working at his desk.
This book is kinda like if bjork wrote a book about her childhood on an isolated Finnish island.
It felt so nice to be Scandinavian for awhile.
It's about superstition, and play, and storytelling, and being obnoxious, and umm I don't know if I can think of a book like this that's ever been written. It's part magic and part throwing mud at you for believing in magic you stupid insolent thing!...more
This was an amazing book, so I read it slow. My friend Jordan recommended this book to me because i mentioned my wife and I are writing a book about dThis was an amazing book, so I read it slow. My friend Jordan recommended this book to me because i mentioned my wife and I are writing a book about dogs. Exceptional book. Memoir as told through a shared life w/ a German shepherd. An Englishman post-WWII navigates London, with Tulip off-leash. The book is fixated much on the sexuality of Tulip and her nature, which he refuses to deny. ...more
First two hundred and eleven pages of this book are right up there with the best prose I've ever read. The characters and the sExcellent. First rate.
First two hundred and eleven pages of this book are right up there with the best prose I've ever read. The characters and the situations. This is "men's tough guy fiction" as good as it gets.
The last hundred pages of the book, are really good too. And it's really rewarding to see some of the payoffs that the arch of Jack Levitt's character lay on the table. But like I said, those first 211 pages are basically carved in stone. Classic. The last one hundred pages are 'a good read'.
A friend pointed me in the direction of this Don Carpenter book, and Don Carpenter in general. Thank god for friends....more
Incredible book. Here's what America is. The narrator punches himself in the head, whacks off to the Great Gatsby, moves from town to town being slighIncredible book. Here's what America is. The narrator punches himself in the head, whacks off to the Great Gatsby, moves from town to town being slightly batshit loony. Vivid writing. ...more
This is the best book I've ever read. It's the saddest, and the funniest, the most living and dead too. I work with a lot of guys who don't read booksThis is the best book I've ever read. It's the saddest, and the funniest, the most living and dead too. I work with a lot of guys who don't read books very often, and every once in a while someone will see me reading at work and ask for a book to read ... this is the one I'll say from now on. ...more
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